Now surprise was on the Soviet side. The Fulcrums dived out of the sun at the bombers. Their own fire-control radars were nearly useless as they approached, but half their missiles were infrared-guided, and the American bombers gave off enough heat to attract the attention of a blind man in a fur coat.
The southbound flight of three never saw them coming in. Two took missile hits and exploded in midair. The third radioed for fighter cover, jinking his aircraft hard-too hard. His second dive bottomed out too late, and the aircraft disintegrated on the ground north of Keflavik in a fireball visible to Edwards thirty miles away.
The Russian fighters were experiencing an airman’s dream. All eight aircraft had individual targets, and they split to hunt them singly before Keflavik absorbed too many bomb hits. The bomber crews pressed in on their targets. It was too late to run away, and all they could do was scream for the fighters to come back and support them.
The ground-based gunners joined in. Firing over open sights, a young sergeant hit a bomber just dropping its load. The bomb bay took a dozen rounds, and the aircraft vanished in a deafening explosion that shook the sky and damaged yet another B-52. One missile-launch crew successfully switched their missile-control systems to the backup infrared mode and fired a single rocket at a bomber. It hit just after the bombs were released. The bomber’s wing erupted in flame and the aircraft swooped east trailing a black river of smoke.
They watched it approach their hill, a wounded monster whose right wing trailed burning fuel. The pilot was trying to maintain altitude so that his crew could eject, but all four of his right engines were gone and the burning wing collapsed. The bomber staggered in the air and dropped, rolling into the west face of Hill 152. None of the crew escaped. Edwards didn’t have to give an order. In five seconds, his men had packed their gear and were running northeast.
The remaining bombers were now over the target and screaming for help from their escorting fighters. Eight successfully dropped their bomb loads before turning clear of the area. The Soviet fighters had claimed five by now, and the surviving crews were desperate to escape the unexpected hazard. The Russians were now out of missiles, and attempting to engage with their cannon. That was dangerous. The B-52s retained their tail guns, and one Fulcrum was damaged by machine-gun fire from his target and had to break off.
The final element of confusion was the return of the American Phantoms. They carried only three Sparrow missiles each, and when they lit off their missile-intercept radars, the Soviet fighters all received warning tones from their defense systems. The Fulcrums scattered before the twelve incoming missiles and dove for the ground. Four dropped down right on top of Edwards’ group, swooping low over a crashed B-52 east of Hafnarfjordur. When they came back up, the sky was clear again. The Phantoms were short on fuel. They could not press their attack and turned away without a single kill. The surviving bombers were now safely hidden in the cloud of jamming. The Soviets re-formed and moved back to Keflavik.
Their first impression was a bad one. Fully two hundred bombs had fallen within the airport perimeter, and nine of them had found runway targets. But runway eleven was unscarred. As they watched, the single Fulcrum left on the ground roared off into the sky, its pilot frantic with rage, demanding a vector to a target. He was ordered to patrol as the rest of the squadron landed to refuel.
The first battle had mixed results. The Americans lost half their bomber force in return for damaging three of Keflavik’s five runways. The Soviets had most of a SAM battery smashed to little gain, but Keflavik was still usable. Already the ground personnel were running to the runway-repair equipment left behind by the Americans. At the end of each runway was a pile of gravel, and a half-dozen bunkers contained steel mats. Heavy equipment would bulldoze the debris back into the holes, even it out, then cover it over with gravel and steel. Keflavik was damaged, but its runways would be fully operational again before midnight.
USS PHARRIS
“I think this one’s for-real, Captain,” the ASW officer said quietly. The line of colored blocks on the passive sonar display had lasted for seven minutes. Bearing was changing slowly aft, as though the contact were heading for the convoy, but not Pharris.
The frigate was steaming at twelve knots, and her Prairie/Masker systems were operating. Sonar conditions were better today. A hard thermocline layer at two hundred feet severely impeded the utility of a surface sonar. Pharris was able to deploy her towed-array sonar below it, however, and the lower water temperature there made for an excellent sound channel. Better still, the layer worked in both directions. A submarine’s sonar had as much trouble penetrating the thermocline as a surface sonar. Pharris would be virtually undetectable to a submarine below the layer.
“How’s the plot look?” the tactical action officer asked.
“Firming up,” ASW answered. “Still the distance question. Given the water conditions and our known sonar performance, our sonar figure of merit gives us a contact distance of anything from five to fourteen miles on direct path, or into the first convergence zone. That predicts out from nineteen to twenty-three miles . . .” A convergence zone is a trick of physics. Sound traveling in water radiates in all directions. Noise that traveled down was gradually turned by water temperature and pressure into a series of curves, rising to the surface, then bending again downward. While the frigate could hear noise out from herself for a distance of about fourteen nautical miles, the convergence zone was in the shape of an annulus-the area between two concentric circles-a donut-shaped piece of water that began nineteen miles and ended twenty-three miles away. The distance to the submarine was unknown, but was probably less than twenty-three miles. That was already too close. The submarine could attack them or the convoy they guarded with torpedoes, or with surface-to-surface missiles, a technology pioneered by the Soviets.
“Recommendation, gentlemen?” Morris asked. The TAO spoke first.
“Let’s put the helicopter up for the near solution, and get an Orion working the far one.”
“Sounds good,” ASW agreed.
Within five minutes, the frigate’s helo was five miles out, dropping Lofar-type sonobuoys. On striking the water, these miniature passive sonar sets deployed a non-directional sonar transducer at a preselected depth. In this case all dipped above the thermocline layer to determine if the target was close. The data was relayed back to Pharris’s combat information center: nothing. The passive sonar track, however, still showed a submarine or something that sounded like a submarine. The helo began moving outward, dropping sonobuoys as it went.
Then the Orion arrived. The four-engine aircraft swooped low along the frigate’s reported bearing-to-target. The Orion carried over fifty sonobuoys, and was soon dropping them in sets both above and below the layer.
“I got a weak signal on number six and a medium on number five,” a sonar operator reported. Excitement crept into his voice.
“Roger, confirm that,” the tactical coordinator on Bluebird-Three agreed. He’d been in the ASW game for six years, but he was getting excited, too. “We’re going to start making MAD runs.”
“You want our helo to back you up?”
“Roger that, yes, but tell him to keep low.”
Seconds later the frigate’s SH-2F Sea Sprite helicopter sped off north, her magnetic anomaly detector trailing out by cable from a shroud on the right side of the aircraft. Essentially a highly sensitive magnetometer, it could detect the disturbance in the earth’s magnetic field made by a large chunk of ferrous metal-like the steel hull of a submarine.
“Signal on number six is now medium-strength. Signal on seven remains medium.” The plotting team took this to mean that the submarine was heading south.
“I can give you a working range figure,” ASW said to the TAO. Forty-two to forty-five thousand yards, bearing three-four-zero to three-three-six.” The frigate relayed this at once to the Orion.
As they watched on radar, the P-3C quartered the area, flying very precise tracks across the box of ocean defined by Pharris’s sonar data as the probable location of the submarine. A computer system plotted the lines as they extended to the south.
“Pharris, this is Bluebird. Our data indicates no friendly subs in the area. Please confirm, over.”
“Roger that, Bluebird. We confirm no reports of friendlies in the area.” Morris had checked that himself half an hour before.
“Signal strength increasing on number six. We now have a weak signal on number five. Number seven is fading out.” The technician was really struggling to be professionally impassive now.
“Range is firming up. Estimate target speed roughly eight knots, distance forty-three thousand yards.”
“Transient! Transient!” called the ship sonar operator. A metallic noise had come from the target bearing. A closing hatch, a dropped tool, an opening torpedo tube door-something had made a uniquely man-made sound.